Category Archives: Government absurdity

24hgold.com reports in “UK’s Royal Mint will sell pension investors gold they can never see” that,

“The Royal Mint in England is to open up its gold vaults to UK pension investors. The Royal Mint will make some of its gold bars available to investors wanting to hold it in tax-efficient pension pots.

“For UK citizens, this is the first time that Royal Mint gold bullion has been authorised by HM [Her Majesty’s] Revenue & Customs . . . for holding in specific pensions.

“Investors are to be offered a choice of bullion, from Royal Mint Refinery 100-gram and 1-kilogram bars, to Signature Gold—a service that allows customers to purchase and own a share of a 400-ounce gold bar.”

Sounds pretty good. However, here comes the punch line:

“Pension investors purchasing gold bars through the Royal Mint will not be able to take delivery of their purchases as they will be placed in storage in ‘The Vault,’ the Royal Mint’s secure storage facility in Wales.”

And, according to the title of the article, pension investors won’t be able to even see the gold they’ve allegedly purchased.

“It’s looking like ObamaCare won’t survive even if Congress can’t repeal it. The nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, said that it’s losing too much—$425 million—from policies sold on the health exchanges, and may have to pull out by 2017.

“If a major publicly-traded insurer bows out, others may follow and destabilize the entire individual market.”

“UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley: ‘We can’t really subsidize a marketplace that doesn’t appear at the moment to be sustaining itself.’”

What’s beating ObamaCare?

Demographics.

“The long-feared ‘death spiral’: Not enough young, healthy folks are signing up for these plans, so insurers are losing money despite the hefty federal subsidies for the coverage. They’re raising premiums to even things out—but that drives even more young folks away, so that only older, less-healthy customers remain, driving new losses . . . .”

The Washington Times recently published “Congress OKs Space Act, paves way for companies to own resources mined from asteroids”. According to that article,

“The stuff of science fiction is about to be U.S. law after Congress approved the Space Act on Monday, paving the way for private companies to own any natural resources they manage to mine from asteroids.”

Could it be that “thar’s gold in them thar asteroids”?

“With potentially trillions of dollars at stake, futurists said the bill is a bold statement of American leadership, keeping the burgeoning private spaceflight industry free of heavy government regulations . . . . ‘This bill encourages the private sector to launch rockets, take risks and shoot for the stars,’ said Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican and chairman of the Science Committee.”

The Washington Times reports (“Dennis Ross pushes zero-based budgeting for federal government”) that Congress may impose much stricter financial controls on government agencies and bureaucracies.

According to said Congressman Dennis A. Ross, Florida Republican and a member of the House Committee on Financial Services,

“The streamlining tactic, known as zero-based budgeting, requires each agency or business unit to justify their budget requests from scratch for all existing and newly requested programs. It’s something the federal government hasn’t attempted since Democratic President Jimmy Carter advocated for it in the 1970s; it relies instead on past budgets as a baseline of money that’s guaranteed, and then requests additional sums year-over-year.

“‘We should be painfully honest with the American people, because it’s their money. When we do the budget process, we want to have some justification for every appropriation that is sought—a legal basis for it, an amount that is less than last year’s and a summary to express the outcome of it.”

Oh, pulleese—as if government could ever be “painfully honest” with the American people about anything. (If government started being “painfully honest,” half of Congress would wind up “painfully” in prison.)

QEs 1, 2 & 3 didn’t really work in the US. QE in Japan hasn’t worked. Now, the European Central Bank wants to try QE in the EU. Good luck with that, hmm?[courtesy Google Images]

Mohamed A. El-Erian is Chief Economic Adviser at Allianz, a multinational financial services company. He recently authored an article in Business Insider about the A.D. 2014 stock markets entitled “Traditional Factors Alone Don’t Explain This Remarkalbe Year For US Stocks”.

Mr. El-Erian observed that,

“2014 has been a remarkable year for US equities–not just in terms of the handsome return for investors (15% for the S&P) but also because of how this was delivered.

“In 2014, the S&P,

“Registered 51 record highs (that’s an average of one a week, the most since 1995);

“Never had more than three days of consecutive losses (a new record);

“Consistently decoupled from potentially damaging historical correlations with other markets, most notably government bonds and commodities; and, in the process,

“Always managed to recover quickly from sudden and scary air pockets.”

You have to admit that, when viewed from Mr. El-Erian’s perspective, last year’s US equity markets were almost as surprising as flipping a coin that came up “heads” 50 times in a row. All this “good luck” makes you wonder. It makes you want to check the coin to see if it has two “heads”.

We’re unable to challenge anything, because we live in a world of government-inspired confusion and lies that result in a loss of definitions. Without definitions, we can’t identify our true adversaries. Without definable adversaries, we are left to live in a world where governments rule by raw might rather than right.

This video talks about a political phenomenon first seen in Russia and then in England. But the video implicitly describes what we also see in the US. Raised and educated to have no values, we don’t know what to think. We can’t choose. We can’t create or join an organized resistence.

This video seems both brilliant and mind-boggling. I think the producer may be on to something profound.

I recently interviewed Michael T. Snyder on the Financial Survival radio program. Mr. Snyder is the author of TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com and of a recent novel entitled The Beginning of the End. He’s an intelligent young man with an enviable education: B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia; a law degree and a Master of Laws of Taxation from the University of Florida.

In the course of the interview Mr. Snyder confided that, ever since he was a young boy, he sought and expected to find teachers who could explain to him how the world really works. But he never found such teachers at the grade school, junior high, or high school levels. That didn’t surprise him, but he did expect to find such teachers at the college level. He didn’t. He definitely expected to find such teachers at the advanced degree levels for a Juris Doctorate and Master of Tax Laws. He found no such teachers.

More, in the ten years since he completed his last degree, he’s come to the shocking conclusion that, in the world of economics, no one actually knows what’s going on. Our economy seems to bump along from one crisis to another and, so far, has seemed to survive—but no one really knows why.